The Muted Bravado of a SMG

Perth Photoblog 1: General Pics

Alright, Flickr didn't exactly work out.. they only allow 3 (?!) albums! So whats the bloody point of having an online photo sharing facility if I can't even organise my photos into nice neat digestible chunks? (Although it does have a pretty cool Flickr badge thingy that is now on the sidebar of my blog.. just thought since I signed up I may as well get something out of my time.. heh.)

If anyone knows a good online photo base that
- is free
- is reliable
- allows easy direct linking
- offers a decent amount of storage space (50 meg?)
- doesn't delete pictures
- allows unlimited galleries
- allows easy photo sharing (i.e. no need to sign up to view)
then please tell me about it!

In the meantime, imageshack it is.

Anyway. This will be the first of 4 photoblogs, regarding the first two weeks of my stay here! The first two weeks with JM, Louis (for the first week) and Lewis. I decided that the best way to organise the photos was by activity.. so i divided them into: General, Food/Cooking, Fishing, and touristing (Perth & Fremantle), . Also, I forgot what we did day to day so I can't exactly do it diary-like. Maybe I drank too much wine.

So, this are the general photos that, together, tells a story of our stay in Perth. A very incoherent, disjointed one, but a story nonetheless:

We arrived in Perth on 24rd May. Gary picked us up from the airport and drove us to his home, where we will be staying. We all fell asleep on the car ride, tired out after watching two movies each on the plane.

Anyway, we reached his house. Same place as in my last aussie photolog. And we were greeted by one of his two chihuahuas, Banjo.



Banjo is damn bloody old. I think at least ten years old? And he looks/sounds/shows it. He has a teeny little bark, runs into things cos hes practically blind, all the fur on his back has practically dropped off, smells pretty bad, and is absolutely cute. I mean, I wouldn't want to hug him cos he sheds and stinks, but hes cute lah. The guys were very amused by him.



In case I haven't made it clear, the photos are not in chronological order. I'm just ordering them in a way such that I think I can write about the trip most coherently. Anyway, heres the music room again. I'm not sleeping there anymore, btw. We're using the guest rooms. I'm wearing a "Chicks Dig Me" t-shirt that Lewis bought in the US for me. The others' had shirts that said other stuff, but they agreed that only I could possibly pull off a shirt that declares your masculine virility so vehemently. Also, they grabbed the other shirts before I could pick.



Wine is bloody cheap here! Everyone knows that, of course, but I'm still shocked at how cheap it is. This is a 4L container of wine.. it costs around 12 bucks (thanks JM). thats 3 bucks a litre! a standard bottle of wine is only 750ml, man. It isn't premium wine, but its very drinkable, and I'm happy.



JM is happy too. Except till he drank too much and went red in the face (and eyeballs) and started feeling like crap. He can't hold his liquor la. I'd post the picture except JM would kill me. Grace, your boyfriend will never be an alcoholic! Be thankful =)



Every night we ate a mad amount of food. Seriously mad. Thats cos Aunty Dolores is a very very generous cook. An average night consisted of a few slabs of pork/mutton/beef, and a mountain of fresh vegetables each. And we cleared it out every night. And ended up completely stuffed. Yum.



Come to think of it, even when we bought dinner, e.g. Domino's and Red Rooster, we also bought a crazy amount of food. And ended up completely stuffed as well. I think we're just greedy pigs lah.



JM had a nutella craving and bought a 750g container (thanks again to JM for clarification) of Home Brand Hazelnut spread, cos it was cheap. It didn't taste as good as nutella, but I suppose it was okay once you got used to it. Anyway, he promised to finish it all before he left cos no one else eats nutella. Thus began an era of nutella smeared foods (weet-bix, mainly), at least till he got sick of it.



I tried to help him. However, I don't really like the taste of nutella so I decided to mask it with tuna in olive oil. Mmmm, good. (Not really.)



Oh, if i haven't mentioned it, its cold here. I think it averages 15-20 degrees in the day. I can take the cold when I'm prepared for it, but in the morning I'm basically not prepared for anything aside from a nice warm bed. Thats me in the jacket.



Thats not me in the blanket. Can't remember who it is, actually. But whoever it was, he was tired. Just look at the awkward position he fell asleep in! We had lots of fulfilling days doing not much really. We showed great adaptability by slowing down the pace of our lives to near-snail proportions, even exceeding (or diminishing, depending on your point of view) that of the native Australians. We watched, I think, 15 movies in the 2 weeks.. mostly DVDs which we bought here, cos they're cheaper. We fished. We roamed the area. We cooked. We played games online. We played lawn boules. But even though we didn't do much, we still managed to get really exhausted at the end of all the nothing.



Oh we played ball too. Had to take advantage of the wide open spaces and green grass fields, y'know? So we bought a nice cheap american football for ten bucks. And it was a bloody hard piece of rubber, man.



So hard, in fact, that sometimes after catching it we'd have screamed in pain. Not that we did, of course, cos we're all so manly.



Did I mention we got tired? Well, we got tired. Maybe its the air. Or maybe theres just an aura of "lazy" surrounding the continent.



Oh yea, in addition to cheap DVD's, this country also has cheap Tim-Tams. 1.99 bucks aussie a pack, as I recall. So before he left, Louis bought a stack of them. The ones he bought were the best ones, truffle flavoured with melted white chocolate centres. I can't remember what the name is. Anyway, I call them Tim-tam-orgasms. (Edit: They're called Creamy Truffle Tempations. Stupid me forgot that I could just zoom in at the pictures to read the box.. sigh. Anyway Tim-tam-orgasm is a better name!)

So thats it for the general section! I would have posted more pics, but I'm lazy to upload anymore than I have to.. haha.

The other 3 posts will come up over the next 2 weeks.. with luck. I don't have much hope in finding a decent online photo storage site.

posted by Đirestraits @ 11:45 am